


The Things They Carried

by AllonsyHelen



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Hints at Stucky, M/M, World War II, angst angst angst, the Howling Commandos
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 04:53:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11029023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AllonsyHelen/pseuds/AllonsyHelen
Summary: The Howling Commandos carried an awful lot of things.





	The Things They Carried

**Author's Note:**

> This is heavily based off of Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” and thus, the idea for this is not mine. It belongs solely to him. You don’t have to have read that to appreciate this though! It’s meant as a tribute to O’Brien’s work as well as Cap and Bucky and their love, and Steve and Peggy’s love. Also, I’m not a historian and I don’t know very much about war or soldiers so if this is wrong in any way, just let me know and I’ll try to correct it! I did conduct research for the story but I’m sure I made mistakes.  
> Also, I wrote the majority of this in 2015, then became utterly convinced it was terrible, and dropped it like it was hot. But then my dear friend and fellow lover of the Stucky-macabre, Alycia (cvptainpoe on ao3, spacebodhi on tumblr), forced me to finish it. And then to post it. Voila.

Captain Steven Grant Rogers carried, mainly, a shield. It strapped to his back and the Vibranium settled light over his muscled shoulder blades. He carried, too, in a holster on his thigh, a Colt M1911A1. Often if the mission called for it, pouches would be added to his belt, containing knives and other weapons, and occasionally he’d sling over his shoulder a Colt M1928A1 Thompson. The weapons never settled quite as light as the shield.

Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes carried an M1941 Johnson rifle in his capable and bloody hands; his eye fit the scope like it was born to be there, a man turned machine long before the cold of the Alps entered his body.

They all carried the essentials for life – a canteen, rations, a bag of grooming supplies. The Sergeant and Captain shared a toothbrush and nobody but Dernier had a comb. Everybody had their own soap and razors but the only one of them who shaved regularly on missions was Cap.

(The Sergeant asked him why, one day, and Cap gave him a significant look, said, “Guess I’m used to bein’ kind of clean-shaven,” and the Sergeant laughed and said, “Well would ya look at that, little Stevie Rogers finally growin’ facial hair like the rest of us, and he don’t even like it!”)

Dum Dum Dugan carried a Bible which he swore to everyone would save his life one day, and maybe it did, there’s no way of telling what it was that saved any of them – a westerly wind, or a muddy road, or a serum in the wrong hands. There’s just no way of telling.

All of them carried gas masks, and all of them agreed, around the fire one night just outside of enemy territory, that the gas masks were eery. They slept under the stars, open and unprotected, and Morita slipped on his gas mask and crept over to tap Dugan on the shoulder and peer at him up close with the thing on. When Dum Dum screamed out a curse, Cap was the first up, and he blushed when he saw Gabe Jones looking at him as he huddled next to Bucky, covering both of them with the shield, but with his pistol in the air, ready to shoot.

“I think you nearly scared the devil right on out of Dum Dum,” Sergeant Barnes said as everyone settled back onto their groundcloths, and Steve set the shield aside.

“I think he scared the devil out of all of us,” Falsworth grumbled, dragging his coat back up to his shoulders and rolling onto his side again.

No one saw the Sergeant’s glance toward the Captain, and the guilty downturn of his mouth.

It was Morita who carried the night vision goggles, though things like this, they passed amongst them, so no one’s pack would become too heavy on long marches. Their boots shifted from muddy to dirty to muddy again; rain came in but it didn’t clean anything. It wet the country and forests, made everyone grumpy except the Captain, who never seemed to be in a foul mood.

(The Sergeant asked him, one night after a 20-mile march that had everyone sore to hell and missing home bad, what his secret was. “What ya doin’, Stevie, you got somethin’ in that serum there that made you so happy all the time?” “Nothin’ in the serum, Buck, just think every day’s a gift here, is all.” “Shittiest gift I ever got. …Aw hell don’t look like I kicked a puppy.” “You don’t have to be here, Buck.” “Sure I do.” “Nah, you could go. Nobody’d blame ya.” “I’m here for good.” A beat. Two pauses. “And  _ that’s _ what I got to be so happy about.” The Captain jabbed the Sergeant in the center of his chest, turned, and walked away. The two were quiet all evening, sitting on opposite sides of the fire, the crackling flame the only sound in the camp as everyone counted their sorrows on both hands.)

Captain Rogers carried with him the weight of rank. Unused to giving orders, commands sat on his tongue strangely, and he would shuffle a bit after speaking them. The men all knew their jobs well, and they did what needed to be done, but there was whispering about Rogers maybe not being qualified to lead a unit, not even a commando unit like this one.

When Sergeant Barnes happened to be nearby for one of these whispered conversations, between Dugan and Falsworth, he put his foot right into it. “What’d ya say?” he asked, coming closer, and Dugan was the only one with the balls to repeat it.

“Sayin’ we’re not sure Rogers has it in him to be in charge.” He looked apologetic, at least, as he said it.

Barnes’s jaw twitched. “St- Captain Rogers has it in him to do anything he wants,” he said firmly, “and this unit wouldn’t  _ exist _ if it weren’t for him. You’d be in a cage and I’d be fucking dead if it wasn’t for Steve’s courage, okay, and his stupidity. Steve’s the  _ only _ person I’d follow to hell on earth, and look.” He gestured around them. “Here we are. So get fucking used to the company or get fucking dead.”

The look in his eyes was so cold that the three men simply nodded at their Sergeant and then dispersed quickly to their tents.

The men carried their skin with them. Gabe Jones carried his dark skin, and the way Dugan said it made him blend in better with the night so really he was  _ lucky _ only made it heavier. Morita carried his skin, too, and the label applied to him carelessly by other soldiers. No one in the unit mentioned the Japs, they were busy with darker forces. But Morita, and Jones too, carried the thought that they weren’t meant to be here, and that it was just Cap’s generosity that brought them.

The men brought their prejudices, but somewhere along the way, they left most of them in the mud.

Rogers carried with him his tights. Barnes discovered these in his bag one night as they sat talking in their tent, just a big piece of canvas draped over some metal supports. (Rogers had been offered an officer’s tent, but he’d said it was ridiculous and he needed no such thing. Rogers carried with him, the whole time, his humility.) Barnes’s laughter, upon pulling the tights from Rogers’s bag, could be heard by all of the men, except Dernier, who was sleeping where he’d passed out by the fire. Dugan’s head popped in through the flap a moment later, not one to miss out on a joke (he carried his humor just as long as Rogers carried his humility). Barnes had a great time holding up the tights. Rogers had an even better time getting a good, long look at the laughter on Barnes’s face. He had a clear view, then, of the way Barnes’s smile faded when Dugan said with laughter still in his voice, “Didn’t know you was a fairy, Cap, woulda done a coupla things different!”

So it was clear that they hadn’t dropped all of their prejudices.

Rogers and Barnes carried with them their nicknames. Barnes was Barnes for less than a week before he became Bucky, thanks to Cap’s inability to call him by anything but the childhood nickname. “Bucky ain’t a guy people take seriously,” Bucky complained when Morita called him Bucky for the first time, and Dum Dum laughed and told him Barnes wasn’t either.

(Though, Bucky carried with him a look in his eye that everyone stayed clear away of; they all, in their darkest moments, thanked whoever they wanted that it was Bucky who got dragged away to his certain death in the HYDRA base, and not them.)

Barnes being called Bucky started a short period wherein they call called each other “Gabey” and “Stevie” and so-on, until one day they were in camp reporting to Colonel Phillips, and Dum Dum emerged from a tent and said, “Monty would ya-” before stopping dead at the disapproving look in the Colonel’s eyes.

And so Steve got pulled aside and lectured about keeping his unit professional. “You aren’t out there to shoot a round of golf with your pals, Rogers,” he said, stern, and Steve had nodded along like one of the bobble heads he and Bucky picked up at a Dodger’s game off the ground.

He and Bucky picked things up, now, small gifts, anything to assuage the guilt of snuffing out lives across Europe. Even Hydra hearts were beating before the Howling Commandos got ahold of them.

Bucky would present Steve with a nice rock, sometimes, or a weird stick he found. Steve, one night, awoke to the patter of rain against the canvas tent. He lifted the flap and stepped outside. Falsworth was on watch and looked up at him. “What’s wrong, Captain?” he asked, immediately alert. (They all carried with them the constant threat of danger.)

“Nothing. Just…” Steve had the secret smile he carried with him that was reserved for Bucky. “Keep vigilant, Falsworth.”

“Yes, sir.” A lazy salute. The grandiosity and seriousness of the army, they had all dropped by now.

Steve crept around the back of the tent where he couldn’t be seen, and slowly molded the dirt made mud by the rain into a cake. Back into the tent, and he dropped it on Bucky’s chest, waking him with a start.

“Steve, what the fuck?” he demanded, looking around, frantic, before his gaze dipped down to his chest and the mud pie.

“Delivery for Mister Barnes,” Steve said with a wide grin.

“Ahhh fuck  _ you _ ,” Bucky said, rolling his eyes and groaning, pushing it off.

“Remember when we used-”

“Of course I remember. Go to sleep.” Bucky’s jaw was tight.

Bucky carried with him sometimes a cloud that Steve couldn’t, for the life of him, disperse. No matter how hard he tried, he seemed to have left the tools at home.

Dugan carried a flask which they’d pass around when it got too hard to move through the motions. Liquor affected them all differently – and it didn’t affect Steve even a bit, and even Bucky sometimes seemed to be acting drunk more than really feeling it.

Steve chose not to ask about it for a long time, until one night when he and Bucky were sitting on a rock, staring at the rest of the men, some of whom were wrestling on the ground, the other of whom were laughing, their bodies rolling with it.

“What d’ya mean?” Bucky asked, giving him a suspicious glance. “I’m drunk as hell right now, you’re just too sober to tell.”

“No you’re not, you’re not even a little drunk,” Steve replied, shoving him. The other men’s drunkenness on nights like tonight made Steve and Bucky looser in a different way.

The cloud was there with Bucky now and the weight of it settled over Steve’s shoulders too.

“Well maybe I’m not, because we got that train to catch tomorrow,” Bucky said. “Not an idiot, Stevie, not gettin’ hungover and missing that shit.”

“Okay but you drank as much as they did,” Steve insisted. (Of course, he carried with him his stubbornness, something he didn’t know how to set down if he wanted.)

Bucky shrugged. “I can hold my liquor. Grew up in Brooklyn working the docks. You forget?”

“Couldn’t forget,” Steve said.

And they both considered the memories that they held in their palms, too precious to put in their packs, too afraid to drop them.

“I’m sleepin’ because you’re boring.” Bucky knocked his shoulder. “See you in the morning.”

“See ya.” Steve watched him go and wondered if he and Bucky could carry each other through till the end of the war.


End file.
